The boy soldier had watched her approach, but now he was diverted by something. A priest had walked up to the barbed-wire fence. Sarah recognized him, in fact: Pope Dimitris Thomatzidis, with his long black robe, giant, bushy beard, and tall black hat. He was a refugee from Samsun in coastal Turkey and a customer of the cheese lady’s shop. Once, before the German occupation, Sarah had accidentally omitted sugar from a batch of bougatsas, and she remembered how kind he’d been, praising the custard pie, even asking for another slice, when the following customer had made a warranted fuss about it. Sarah had winced when she’d tasted it, but the pope had already gone.

Maybe the pope could help now. Maybe the Nazis would listen to him. Sarah nodded at him in recognition and tried to formulate a plan of attack. Her head grew wild with charts and thoughts, none of them coalescing. The pope nodded back. Then through the fence, he handed a cigarette to a man in his forties. A man whom Sarah gleaned was a Jewish prisoner.

But then she noticed a little boy sitting on the ground. Benjamin! He was playing with nothing. He was playing with dirt. He was not off dancing or reading. Beside him Sarah saw her parents. Her father in his brown tweed coat. It was so hot for a coat! Why was he wearing a coat? She started to trot that way. Milos reached for her.

“Leave me,” she hissed. She walked faster, but Milos hung on to her arm. He was not letting her go, and all she wanted to do was go to her family. She hadn’t seen them in over a year. A year!

She called out, “Mama.” Benjamin looked up. His face broke into a giant smile. He nudged her mother’s arm. Sarah was nearly there. She was nearly to them.

This was the moment that could have gone a thousand different ways. In the years since, Sarah had cataloged those ways—her fingers touched Benjamin’s through the fence; Baba kissed her cheek through the fence; Mama said, It’s okay, darling. We love you. We forgive you. So many permutations. So many chances. Maybe all of that happened, and then still Milos pulled her away. Or maybe all of that happened, and then the boy soldier took her. He understood she was Jewish, that she belonged to these prisoners, and he put her behind the fence with them. To die with them, but never to wonder what she read in their silent eyes.